


An embarrassment of Jameses

by anactoriatalksback



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Come Eating, Felching, Fisting, Jealousy, M/M, Oral Sex, Post-Canon Fix-It, Sex Crying, significant use of first names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:34:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25367671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoriatalksback/pseuds/anactoriatalksback
Summary: ‘You are a man of property, it would seem,’ continues James, face still turned away from Francis, ‘perhaps too much property. An embarrassment of Jameses. Hard for a fellow to tell them apart.’Or: James and Francis. Francis and James.Or: Francis has a type. James has noticed.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames, Past Francis Crozier/Sir James Clark Ross (one-sided)
Comments: 48
Kudos: 107





	An embarrassment of Jameses

Francis is waiting for James to tell him what’s wrong.

They are sitting in their hack on their way back to their rooms in Portman Square, having just come from dinner with James and Lady Ann. A nice evening, with a nice claret for James and James, and Lady Ann presiding over the table like a Roman goddess of the hearth.

James[1] had said so to Lady Ann, bowing low over her hand. Francis had watched the creases by his jaw deepen as he smiled, a warm thing crinkling his forehead and softening his mouth. Lady Ann had smiled back, turning off the compliment playfully.

Games beautiful people play, Francis had thought, watching them with very little rancour. The cut and thrust of compliments that are precisely extravagant enough. Taking and receiving praise is a skill which can be learned, but you have to have the opportunity.

James had smiled on James and Lady Ann. Another man – a lesser man – might have taken the opportunity to sling his arm around his wife’s shoulders, given her an order of some sort, however trivial or domestic or playful. Something, however slight, to remind his guests whose hearth they were standing in.

James had turned instead to Francis and asked him to come look at Lloyd’s notes on his new dip circle. Within moments they’d had their heads together, Francis pressing James on what he knew, what could be verified or replicated, what new, what could be learned.

When Francis had lifted his head and said ‘Of course, James was our man with the Fox,’ James had smiled back at him – sincere, but with something behind the eyes – and said ‘It ought to have been Francis.’

And God knows Francis agreed then, and agrees now. For him to have been good enough for the Royal Society, but not John Franklin, was a slight that he savoured, and tended, and that he gathered to him to prick him awake at night.

What would he have done, thinks Francis, with such careless magnanimity from James three – two – years ago?

Thrown it back in his face probably, spat it out for condescension and presumption. Insisted James launch into a smooth oration about his poor fumbling efforts with his poor fumbling Fox, teetering and misaligned, while Francis looked on with his most malignant smile.

Now Francis blushed, even smiled a smile of flustered pleasure – a poor wavering uncertain thing – at James, who smiled back before turning back to Lady Ann with every appearance of solicitous interest.

At the dinner-table, James had sparkled. He’d put aside his usual dinner-table staples of garrisons, or sieges, or daring rescues, and would not produce them unless pressed. Age had taught him the use of other tales: pillow-fights, and overturning canoes, and duck-ponds in mid-winter. They were sunlit stories of a different kind, of a James running headlong into a spree or a melee and like as not coming off second-best, a James burning with ardour, puppyish and ridiculous and so impossibly young Francis ached to think of him.

He was not the only one, if the countenances of Lady Ann or James were to be believed.

‘They gave you the freedom of the City of Liverpool for that, didn’t they?’ James had said, when James had finished telling a story of the freezing Mersey, an unplanned swim and a doughty and unimpressed washerwoman, shaking out James’s ruined smallclothes.

‘Ah,’ James had said, the pink rising in his cheeks. ‘Not for spiting that poor washerwoman.’

‘Don’t prevaricate, James,’ Francis had said. ‘He jumped into the river to save a drowning man, Lady Ann.’

‘Please,’ Lady Ann had said, ‘please, Captain Crozier, I cannot call you Francis if you do not call me Ann.’

Francis had smiled back. One day he would take the proffered hand, he would. She was a good woman, a kind woman. She deserved James. ‘James saved a man’s life that day,’ he had said.

James had looked embarrassed, shaking his hair – long again now, and gleaming in the candlelight – out of his eyes. ‘I was rash then.’

‘You were _brave,_ Captain Fitzjames,’ Lady Ann had said, all stern maternal warmth.

‘Will you call me James, please?’

‘I shall,’ Lady Ann had said, ‘if you call me Ann.’

James had smiled, the furrows deepening in his cheeks.

They had taken their leave, James and Lady Ann waving from their withdrawing-room. Good cheer, Francis had thought. Soft lights and perfumed dresses, ease and good company. How easily James had worn it all.

Then they got into the hansom and James stretched his long legs out before him. He clasped his hands loosely in his lap and turned his head, seemingly disinclined to talk.

He has continued to be silent as the cab makes its way through Blackheath, skirting Southwark and Blackfriars. He has stared out of the window as the cab rattles over the bridge at Blackfriars and then the Embankment.

At Pall Mall he says, still looking out of the window, ‘She is a fine woman, you know.’

‘Lady Ann?’ says Francis. ‘She is, yes, none better.’

‘ _Ann_ ,’ says James, and Francis sits up at the emphasis in his voice, ‘would be a sister to you.’

‘I have a sister,’ says Francis. ‘I have many sisters.’

‘You do not wish for another,’ says James, ‘I understand that. Or is it that you do not wish for this one?’

Francis does not reply. He thinks that, for Lady Ann to be a sister, James would have to be a brother. He thinks also that, one day, that might well happen.

He says instead ‘You were particularly brilliant tonight.’

He injects his tone with enough irony that he expects a reaction: for James to sniff at him, his outrage nearly all histrionic, but not quite. Something might be said about Francis’s dogged refusal to acquire anything approaching, if not charm, then at least pleasantness. Something might be said about Francis no longer needing grace of manner if James will be his factor. Something – anything – might be said.

James shrugs. Francis watches the corner of his mouth twitch up and waits, but no more is forthcoming. One long finger comes up, tracing a pattern on the glass.

Francis keeps watching him. Once, he had watched as James shook and raged and grieved for a man who inspired a devotion he’d never earned[2]. He’d watched, and ached to wrap his arms around James’s long body, to cradle his head and thumb away the tears he was too exhausted to pretend he wasn’t shedding. He had instead sat, screaming internally at an excruciatingly familiar combination of want and dread and impotence and bitter mockery of his own tragic pretensions.

He could reach across, now. Touch James on the shoulder. Pull him discreetly into his arms. Press a kiss into his dark hair.

But the James half-lit in the stray moonbeams from the window is an alien, pale and lovely and elfin. Francis half-expects that his hand would pass through air if he reached for this strangely silent James.

So he watches James, and aches anew, and waits.

When they reach Pall Mall, James seems to have made a decision. He turns to look at Francis, whose breath catches. James’s face, all the sharp lines and angles of it, seem to have been whetted by the moonlight. His nostrils are flared, his lips parted.

He slides towards the centre of the carriage, closer to Francis. Francis starts towards him, a hand reaching out, but his breath leaves him in a gasp when one long hand takes Francis’s cock in a determined grasp through his trousers.

‘What the -’

James nods his head in the direction of their coachman. His fingers continue their work, feeling for the shape of Francis’s stiffening prick.

‘James,’ says Francis, hand on James’s shoulder. A quick hunch, and his hand is shrugged off. James’s hair falls over his forehead as he bends over his task. Francis squints down at him but cannot see his expression. His hand continues, pressing and sliding with a resolute, workmanlike efficiency.

‘James,’ says Francis more insistently, but James ignores him. Finally, Francis lays his hand over the one working him. ‘James.’

James looks up at him then. His eyes are glittering in the dark. His tongue passes over his lips, leaving a brief wet gleam.

‘James,’ says Francis, ‘tell me.’

In a flash, James has resumed his post by the window, leaving a chill by Francis’s side and over his still-hopeful prick.

‘James.’

A silence. Then, in accents of careful nonchalance, ‘You feel it still.’

‘Feel what still?’

James turns his head to look at Francis, a steady gaze with such a weight of despair Francis starts forward, held back by one long thin hand. ‘Sir James and Ann.’

Francis is silent. James nods, once, a quick thing, and turns his head to stare out of the window as Regent Street flies by.

Francis watches him, miserable and cursing himself. He moves closer to James, who gives no sign of noticing.

‘I am … glad for James,’ says Francis, at length. He is close enough now to watch the moonlight glance off James’s eyelashes.

James says nothing.

‘He is happy with Lady Ann, and she is – I know she is a fine woman, James, deserving of every good thing.’

James says nothing.

‘James -’

‘Which James?’

Francis flinches back. ‘James -’

‘Which James?’

James is still looking out of the window. ‘You’ll understand why I might ask you to specify, Francis, I’m sure.’

‘James, for God’s sake -’

‘You are a man of property, it would seem,’ continues James, face still turned away from Francis, ‘perhaps too much property. An embarrassment of Jameses. Hard for a fellow to tell them apart.’

‘James, you cannot think -’

‘I can think all manner of things, Francis. I can think them when I have little reason not to.’

‘I do not – I am glad for him, James, I would not have you -’

‘Would not have me what?’ says James. Oh, he’s angry. Anger is good, anger is better than that terrible black flat thing that was in James’s voice before. Anger Francis knows. ‘Would not have me watch you rebuff an offer of friendship from an excellent woman for love of the man she has had the temerity to love?’

‘James -’

‘And who loves her?’

‘I know, James -’

‘And would not then have me trust the evidence of my eyes and judgement?’

‘James -’

‘What would you not have me do, _Francis_?’

‘James, you have no cause for -’

‘- Do not say jealousy -’

‘– Jealousy.’

James’s eyes snap. ‘I am _not_. Jealous.’

‘James – ‘

‘I am not jealous,’ says James, ‘I am merely curious about the precise length of the mourning obsequies you intend to perform, Francis. One would not wish to be backward in the observance of all proper attention.’

‘James -’

‘And if,’ says James, ‘I have been too bold, too _thrusting_ , in permitting Lady Ann any little familiarities that she requested, I am earnestly desirous, Francis, of knowing whether I have committed a solecism. One does wish to be _comme il faut_.’

‘James - ’

‘That is one thing. Ought I to have insisted on my title and insisted on hers? Am I meant to abide by a Franciscan policy towards her? Or do I presume too much to think that I am to present a united front with you?’

‘No! That isn’t -’

‘Am I meant to punish her too, for daring to take your James -’

‘James, he’s not -’

‘- Your James from you? And how long do I punish her, Francis?’

‘James -’

‘Which. James. Francis?’

‘Don’t, for God’s sake, don’t -’

‘Ah, capital,’ says James, ‘we’re home.’

They are indeed. The hansom’s come to a stop outside their tall house. James flings open the door of the cab, throws what looks like rather too much money at their driver and stalks to their front door.

Francis scrambles out after him, feeling ill-used and entirely unprepared for the long thundercloud waiting politely inside their rooms for him.

He has barely shut the door behind him when James is on him, clawing off his greatcoat, mouth crushed to his. He keeps up as best as he is able, but James is simultaneously all angles and elbows and lush, yielding soft places, so Francis contrives to anchor himself with hands on his appallingly slim waist and holds on for dear life.

Long hands are bracketing his face, mouth nipping at his. Francis pulls James closer, impossibly closer, grunting in discontent into his mouth at the heavy wool of the greatcoat James still hasn’t doffed. His fingers flex at James’s waist, thumbs dipping below the wool of his trousers. James hisses into Francis’s mouth, pulls him closer to lick at Francis’s lips and inside. Francis sucks eagerly on James’s tongue, contrives to get a handful of his arse and squeezes.

James pulls away from Francis, breath coming in short pants. His eyes rake up and down Francis as he licks his lips. There is a gleam in his eyes that Francis has never seen before, but he thinks is the one James might have worn before he plunged into the Mersey to throw his life after a drowning sailor whose name he didn’t even know.

And then Francis bucks as there’s a hand on his cock.

‘Ja- James, what are you -’

‘Take me,’ says James, a peremptory snap. ‘Here. Come on.’

Francis’s cock jerks at the command in that well-beloved baritone, but there is a febrile, trembling charge to James that he needs to better understand. ‘James, what are you doing?’

James casts his eyes heavenwards. ‘I was making myself rather plain, I thought. Very well -’ and his fingers are unbuttoning Francis with swift movements, ‘I will be plainer.’

‘No,’ says Francis, ‘I meant – James, Christ.’

James has sunk to his knees and has his hand on Francis’s prick through his trousers.

‘James.’

James looks up, lips tight with impatience. ‘It can _wait_ , Francis.’

Francis gets hold of James’s chin and raises it. James slants his eyes downwards until Francis tightens his grip.

‘James.’

James raises his eyes to Francis’s, and Francis’s fingers tighten again because no, no, nothing should ever be permitted to make James look like that.

‘I understand, Francis,’ says James. His hands fall away from Francis’s waist. Francis tugs at James’s chin, gently, until he gets his feet from under himself and stands up. Francis’s hands move to his shoulders and holds him out so that he can see James’s face and James can see his. He wants nothing more than to hold him tightly to himself, but he thinks he needs to earn that.

‘I do understand,’ says James again, because of course James has no intention of holding his tongue. ‘You had … adventures. Together. You saw things, found things, made things. I understand that, Francis – God, none better.’

James, and his eyes on distant horizons and great escapades. ‘I know, James.’

‘And,’ says James, his mouth twisting in a way that Francis has seen once before and never wants to see again, ‘that James is real. This one,’ he gestures at himself, ‘is a surface. A construction, and a hollow one.’

Francis finds his hands tightening on James’s shoulders until his eyes widen at the pressure. ‘Stop that,’ he says, ‘stop that this instant.’

‘I’m not wrong.’

‘You are a construction,’ says Francis, ‘because nobody else in the world was fit to make you, or even think of you. Nobody.’

James opens his mouth to argue and Francis claps his hand over it. ‘Whisht,’ he says. James narrows his eyes at him, but says nothing more.

‘When I met you,’ says Francis, ‘I wanted to scream. Another James, bright and brave and beautiful. Another born performer.’

He can feel James’s lips twitch into a smile under his palm.

‘Another one, I thought. Another James beyond my ken.’

He can feel James begin to protest and his hand tightens. ‘You _are_ out of my ken, lad. I’m not being modest, now. You’re out of anyone’s ken. I’d shudder to meet the man who thought he deserved you.’

 _Oh, but he exists_ , thinks Francis. He exists, and is probably called James himself. A great bounding Newfoundland puppy of a man, long of limb and rosy of cheek, ruling over some sun-dappled shire. He breathes an easy golden confidence, he will listen raptly to James’s stories and marvel at his appalling doggerel, he will match James’s abounding vitality with his own, the bastard, the bastard with his fresh and stainless youth and his fresh and stainless vowel sounds, he doesn’t know how lucky he is, he doesn’t know how Francis hates him.

‘I loved him,’ he says. James nods, rolls his eyes a little. ‘Yes, I know you know that. I did love him, James. I love him still.’

James nods again, quickly, jerkily. Francis sees him prepare for a speech: something carefully nonchalant, thin mouth preparing to flatten, vowel sounds never more aggressively crystalline.

‘I love him,’ he says, hands tightening across James’s mouth and on his shoulder, ‘and I am glad for him. He is where he should be and I would have it no other way.’

James stills and Francis’s fingers flex on his shoulders as he tries to collect words together. Hard to explain, he thinks. James’s compromises have only ever been to build himself a shelter, a glistering carapace of praise and admiration that he can trade in for the privilege of being his own shining headlong self, the self made up of acts of true valour that he insists don’t count, are naught but bankable currency that will earn him the chance to be the true James Fitzjames. He deserves a heart as unspotted and impetuous as his own, not the cracked and bleeding thing that Francis has carried and broken and mended and which threatens now to break anew every time the afternoon light gets snared in James’s hair.

Hard to explain that the Francis who loved – loves – James is the same who loves James, that his love for the one would be scarce possible without his love for the other. That he loves James precisely because his love for James taught him the way of it. That he cannot say he was waiting for James, because Francis understands the North Star and he understands forces at a distance, but not all the most finely-tuned instruments in the world could have predicted James, and Francis would not have believed them if they had.

And chief of all things in the world that he could not have predicted was a James who would take his helpless, protesting ardour, drawn to him irresistibly like the hidden magnetic loops of the earth, and reflect it back to him.

‘I was not looking for,’ he begins, and sighs. ‘I didn’t know such as you were possible.’ He looks at James’s eyes, dark and attentive, and is compelled to add ‘And I’m still not entirely certain of it.’

James looks at him for a long moment and then huffs against Francis’s staying hand. Francis lets his hand fall away, dares to brush the backs of his fingers against the creases in James’s jaw.

‘I do not intend to make you pretend you never met anyone before me, Francis,’ says James.

‘I know, James,’ says Francis. ‘Had I not met James, I could never have been prepared for you.’ And because he does not intend to perjure himself any more, he adds ‘And God knows I was ill-enough prepared as it was.’

James rolls his eyes again. Francis pulls him in a little closer.

‘You are,’ he tries, and promptly gives up. ‘I’m _glad_ for James. For James, and for Ann.’

He watches James’s eyes widen at his use of Lady Ann’s Christian name. A smile begins on his thin lips, and Francis feels his own curve upwards in response.

‘Well, I suppose that’s enough of that,’ says James, in a truly dreadful attempt at his drawing-room drawl. He smooths his hand over his hair, starts putting himself to rights. ‘And besides,’ he says at length, in the tones of a happy afterthought, ‘I’m taller than he is, anyhow.’

He tosses his hair out of his eyes, and Francis is seized by one of the sudden floods of affection that have afflicted him ever since he took James’s offered hand[3], a crashing violent thing that threatens to bring him to his knees.

‘Stop it,’ he says before he can stop himself, and reaches blindly for James, burying his face in his neck and taking fortifying gulps of air.

Francis is used to thinking of his body as an instrument. An instrument for venturing, for observing, for measuring and recording and calibrating. He has a serviceable body, designed to weather and endure and to bear burthens. Ears that can hear the word ‘No’ in a multiplicity of accents and intonations, knees that are designed to bear his weight and then stiffen and bring him back to his feet again.

Loving James, he realises, is no different. His eyes and mouth and heart and hands and prick are pressed into service, automatically and efficiently. Love strolls briskly through the rest of him, carries out an inspection and hammers and thrashes him into a thing that wants James. It feels to Francis that he has scooped up and thrown overboard as much of himself as he can and he still overflows with it, that even pouring himself into James doesn’t seem to make room for it. The reverse, in fact.

He says, instead, mumbling into the tender skin where James’s impossible neck meets his shoulder, ‘Have mercy, man.’

He can feel James smile, how he cannot say, and then there are long fingers in his hair, pulling his head back so that he is looking up at him.

‘No mercy,’ says James, ‘you showed none for me, after all.’

Francis snorts. Characteristic of James to look back over three years of hissing and carping and condescension and cast himself as a lovesick swain, palely loitering. Even more typical of him to dress Francis up as _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_. ‘That’s how you remember it, is it?’

James nods, eyes bright. His nose brushes against Francis’s before his mouth descends.

Characteristically, again, of James, the kiss is delicate, almost perversely chaste, considering what he was minded to do not five minutes ago. Francis kisses back, tasting James’s claret and the _blancmange_ they’d all had, enjoying the hushed sweetness of it until James’s mouth presses harder, tongue licking Francis’s bottom lip. Francis opens to James, slides his hands down to James’s hips, pulls him in firmly so that they can circle and grind and push against each other.

James hisses into Francis’s mouth and pushes him back against the door. Francis moves his hands around to James’s arse, squeezing while he rolls his hips against James’s. He’s stiffening fast in his trousers and so is James, moaning and pinning Francis urgently.

Francis moves a hand up to James’s hair, pulling his mouth off Francis’s own with a soft sound that makes them both groan. ‘Bed,’ says Francis, disinclined for more words than absolutely necessary. ‘Upstairs. Now.’

He presses a kiss to James’s lips that threatens to get away from both of them very quickly. ‘Bed,’ he says again, disengaging himself and holding out a hand. ‘Now.’

James throws him a look over his shoulder that has Francis wanting to drag him to the floor as James had wanted when they came in. First thoughts are best, after all. But then he thinks of his knees, takes in a breath and starts determinedly upstairs. If the look in his eye is to be believed, James will require calisthenics of Francis, and Francis has an abysmal record of refusing him.

They reach their bedchamber more or less without incident, even with James pressing up close behind Francis on the stairs, and Francis growling and shoving James up against a wall so that he can snatch and fumble at his cravat. By the time they topple through the door of Francis’s bedroom, the offending thing has been thrown over the balustrade, James’s greatcoat is sliding off his shoulders and three buttons of his waistcoat have been opened.

Francis pushes James onto the bed, where he sprawls in a tangle of elbows and knees, still displaying that infuriating greyhound elegance.

Francis straddles him, fingers working on the remaining buttons of his waistcoat. James is watching him, lips parted. He sits up to let Francis push his waistcoat off, then thumbs off his braces and slides his long fingers through the buttons of his shirt. Francis attacks the buttons of his trousers and James lifts his hips, suspending himself on his hands for the purpose. Francis moves down so that he can attend to James’s gleaming black shoes, running his fingers up the soles of his long feet and grinning as James squirms. He’s tempted to fling the shoes over his shoulders like a caber, but knows James will not approve when he has recovered his wits. Instead, he cups his shapely calf and raises his leg, feeling for his hose. He rolls them down, pressing his mouth to every inch of pale flesh he reveals, until he can peel them off white bony feet, exquisite and vulnerable. He mouths at James’s ankles, grazes the soft skin there with his teeth. Relishes James’s little whimper.

When he looks along James’s body, James’s prick is standing, stiff and proud, against his thin stomach which is moving in and out rapidly with every breath he takes. All of a piece with the man, James’s cock is long and haughty and improbably lovely. Francis lifts an eyebrow at it, and then at James himself.

James reaches for him and Francis crawls up the length of his body into his arms. They kiss, fingers tangling in hair, chests pressed together, until Francis has to lift his head to gulp in air. James’s hands slide underneath Francis’s jacket, stroking the silk of his waistcoat. Francis fumbles it off, flings it away from him to parts unknown, falls back into the heat of James’s mouth. They kiss until Francis’s lips are bitten and sore, until his thumbs are digging into the soft flesh over James’s hipbones, pinning him to the bed, until Francis’s prick is straining against his trousers.

He nudges James’s chin up so that he can fasten his lips to his lovely throat. He feasts himself with tongue and teeth, licking over the marks he left (this morning? Last afternoon?) and finding unblemished skin to harass. James’s fingers are in his hair, holding him in place as he moans and undulates beneath him.

When he has left a garland of bruises around James’s neck, glistening with spit, he moves down, mouth open and wet around the curl of his collarbone, his nipples, the dip of his navel, the soft skin at his waist. He licks and nips at the tender flesh of his inner thigh, smiles against James’s skin at the whimper that gets him.

He raises one hand, gesturing blindly for the pillow that James shoves into it. Presses a kiss to the skin over James’s hipbone and urges James’s hips up so he can place the pillow under them. When he is satisfied, he bends his head again.

His mouth creeps up to James’s hole, and he feels James’s breath get sharper and shallower the closer he gets. When his tongue first sweeps over that little pucker, James’s breath stops entirely.

Francis takes James’s leg and hoists it up over his shoulder to make room for himself. He opens his mouth and lets himself drivel over the area like a slavering dog. He licks around James’s hole in flat, heavy strokes, before pointing his tongue and thrusting in.

James is squirming on the bed, lifting his arse and pushing onto Francis’s face, and Francis has to dig the thumb of one hand warningly into his hip to stay him and tighten the fingers of his other hand on the knee over his shoulder. When Francis lets his knee slide down, he sees that his cufflink has pressed hard into the tender flesh behind James’s knee. He strokes at the injury with the pads of his fingers, murmuring an apology.

Francis reaches for the drawer next to their bed to retrieve their little bottle of oil. He removes his cufflinks and tosses them onto their bedside table, watching James follow the little _clink_ they make as they land. He rolls up one shirtsleeve to his elbow and pours the oil onto the fingers of one hand.

James sighs and stretches himself, a little smile on his lips.

‘You’re pleased with yourself,’ says Francis, with a grin.

James nods cheerily. Spreads his legs and brings Francis in for a kiss, more sipping at Francis’s tongue than anything else.

Francis straightens up and presses the pad of one slick finger to James’s entrance, watching James’s face. James nods and lifts his lips, a soundless ‘ _Yes_ ’ parting his lips.

Francis slides in his finger, watching the sigh float from James’s lips. It doesn’t take long for James to be ready for the second, purring with satisfaction and curling his toes on Francis’s shoulder like a great cat. Francis mouths at the arch of James’s foot. Braces his weight on one hand as he pushes in deeper with his other. James lets out a deep groan and rocks himself down. Three fingers now, and Francis seeks out the place inside James that will make him arch off the bed and yell. He beats a little tattoo on it once, twice, three times. Watches James twist and writhe.

He takes some time to make himself at home before he traces James’s rim with the tip of his little finger. James whimpers and wriggles, trying to get him inside.

‘Yes,’ says Francis, reaching up to touch James’s cheek, shining with sweat, ‘Yes.’

He knots his fingers together and pushes in. James’s heel digs painfully into the skin over Francis’s shoulder-blade, seeking purchase in the thin linen of his shirt. James is hot inside and tight, clinging to him as he pulls away and pushes back in.

‘Yes,’ he hisses, ‘more. Francis. _Francis_.’

‘Yes,’ says Francis, ‘ssshhh, yes, yes, let me, let me…’

Francis works with a hungry, exacting caution, stroking James from the inside, making forays as deep as he can reach. Making room for himself. Making way. James heaves and moans beneath him, sharp high sounds. When Francis looks at him, he sees the arch of his throat as James flings his head back against the pillow.

‘More,’ he says again, a keening edge to his voice, ‘Francis, please, I need -’

And Francis judges that he might have had enough preparation, so he begins to withdraw his fingers. Until a long hand shoots out, clamping around his wrist.

Francis’s head jerks up to stare at James. James who is staring back, nostrils flaring and eyes dark and huge in his face.

‘More,’ he says again, in a cracked whisper.

‘James?’ says Francis.

James pulls himself up so that he is leaning back on his elbows. His foot slides off Francis’s shoulder. He’s spread out now for Francis, Francis who is buried four fingers deep in him. His mouth is trembling but his eyes are steady when he looks at Francis and says again, very clearly: ‘More.’

Francis thinks he’s shaking too, glances down at the hand he’s bracing himself on and yes, yes, he’s trembling. ‘James,’ he says, and his voice is a poor famished thread of a thing. He clears his throat and tries again and oh, all he has contrived is to deepen the plea in his tones: ‘James, are you certain?’

James nods. Parts his lips and says, softly: ‘Please.’

And oh, in that moment James could tell him that he’d dropped a glove on Beechey Island, and Francis would swim there to retrieve it.

Francis nods, shakily. He pulls his fingers out slowly, shushing James’s whine of protest. Retrieves the bottle of oil and coats his hand liberally.

‘You’re not glazing a ham hock, Francis,’ says James, watching him with a jaundiced eye.

‘James, I’ll thank you not to hurry me. Let me work, man.’

‘Is _that_ what you’re doing?’

‘James -’

‘You might want to set sail before the passage closes, Captain Crozier.’

Francis reaches with his other hand and takes James’s chin in a firm hold. ‘Not used to waiting, are you, boyo?’

‘I’m _very_ used to waiting,’ says James, lifting his chin, ‘I’m _tired_ of waiting. You made me wait three years.’

Francis’s lips twitch. Again, he says ‘That’s how you remember it, is it?’

Again, James nods. ‘I have,’ he says with _hauteur_ , ‘a particularly reliable memory.’

Francis bends to kiss him, hard. ‘You’re a damn play-actor, James.’ He straightens and looks once more at James, searchingly. ‘You’re certain?’

James nods again, and spreads his legs wider, tilting his hips up in mute invitation.

Francis takes the oil and pours down a stream, running down the base of his prick, sliding into James’s pink open hole. James hisses at the cool of the oil on his hot skin, twisting a little. Francis watches as the oil wends a glistening, obscene trail down to his bollocks, his arse, along his thighs.

‘Francis.’

Francis jerks his head up and meets James’s dark gaze. He nods. Knots his fingers together, tucks his thumb into his palm, and slowly pushes in, eyes on James’s face the while.

As he enters, he sees James’s mouth fall open. A high, shocked sound rushes out of him.

‘James?’

‘Yes,’ says James, ‘Yes, yes, just -’

‘Are you sure?’

‘My God, man,’ says James, in a snap so familiar Francis feels tears prick the back of his eyes, ‘yes, come _on_ , _yes_.’

Francis nods. Probes further, swallowing at the wet sound of James’s hole opening for him, taking him in. Watches James buck and writhe as the first set of knuckles makes its way in, then the second. Francis flexes, ventures a little deeper, working his way steadily down to his palm. When Francis pulls back, ever so slightly, James’s hole sucks his fingers back in with a greedy sound. His cock is stiff, an angry red, leaking against his stomach. His fists are clenched in the bedspread.

Francis realises he’s sweating, has soaked the collar of his shirt and plastered his hair to his scalp with his exertions. A drop falls off his forehead, pooling in the hollow over James’s hipbones. James’s head jerks at the sensation and he lets out a long low moan.

‘Francis. _Francis_.’

‘James, are you -’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it -’

James’s lips part, a smile trembling on them. ‘ _Yes_. So – oh, Francis.’

Francis moves his thumb out in a delicate, cautious motion, widening the space by careful degrees. He works his way in slowly, swallowing at the rich, succulent sounds of James’s hole drawing him in. When his hand is in through to the wrist, he and James let out a tremulous breath.

‘James, I’m -’

Francis stops. He’s felt this sense of completion, of welcome, before, in James’s lush heat. But this demanding, greedy, _filthy_ embrace makes his knees all but buckle.

(They must not. Francis will numb all parts of him that are not inside James now, that are not entirely given over to wresting those sweet, broken sounds from him.)

James looks at him. Reaches one long arm up to Francis, bent over him. Brushes his fingertips against Francis’s shoulder. An encouragement, or a question.

Francis smiles down at him, a seeking tremulous thing a hairsbreadth from tears. ‘ _I’m_ all right, lad,’ he says. ‘Are you?’

James nods. Francis nods back and licks his lips.

He curls his fingers into a loose fist and watches James buck and keen. He sucks in his breath as James clamps down on him, hot and tight and imperious.

He pushes forward once, gingerly, and watches James sigh, a long dreamy thing. Clear fluid drools from his prick, as though forced out by Francis’s fist.

‘James, James, are you -’

James’s head rolls back against the pillow. He moistens his lips and says in a rasp: ‘Full.’

Francis moves once again, and James mewls, a formless thing tearing itself past his lips. His head is lolling against the pillows, cock jerking with every movement of Francis’s hand as though entirely independent of his conscious intention.

There are tears at the corner of his eyes, Francis observes. ‘James! Christ, James, you have to – am I hurting you?’

James shakes his head with all the vigour he can muster. ‘It’s so – so _much_.’

‘Too much?’

James’s head falls back. He says again, on a breath: ‘Full.’ The smile is back on his lips – inward and wondering.

Moving carefully – very carefully, so as not to jar the hand buried inside James – Francis lowers himself, moves into an ungainly crouch so that his face hovers over James’s. The tears are streaming down his cheeks now, punched out by the motion of Francis’s hand just as surely as the clear stuff from the cock dribbling against his chest.

Francis lifts a thumb to wipe away the tears, cupping James’s jaw gently. James turns his head to catch Francis’s thumb between his lips and suck it into his mouth, a hot greedy movement. Francis groans and licks up the tears from James’s cheeks in ungraceful, flat swipes. He forces his tongue past James’s lips and his own thumb with a growl, needing urgently to be inside James every way – _any_ way – he can.

At length he lifts his head from James’s, chest heaving against his. Presses one last kiss to James’s mouth, swollen and red, and begins to move down.

James says, in an urgent rumble: ‘Don’t. Don’t make me spend. Not yet.’

Francis looks at him, and James continues: ‘I want -’ he licks his lips, ‘I want you to spend in me.’

Francis shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath. ‘James, are you -’ James’s cock is red and steadily leaking. It must be painful.

James nods, holding Francis’s gaze.

Francis nods back, and moves so that he’s bracing on one arm, crouching between James’s legs. Carefully, gingerly, he works his hand out, shivering at the wet sucking sound of James’s hole reluctantly relinquishing his wrist, then his palm, then his fingers, one by one.

He glances down at the gape he’s left behind – pink and glistening like a shocked-open, hungry mouth – and his throat dries. He bends to kiss James’s rim and his eyes fly up at James’s sharp breath.

‘James?’

James is biting his lip. He meets Francis’s eyes and admits ‘A trifle sensitive.’

‘James -’

‘Do not,’ says James, his voice ringing with a sharp authority, ‘I wanted it. I _want_ it.’

Francis holds his gaze for a long moment and then nods. He reaches for his trousers and begins to unbutton himself. He pushes down his smallclothes just enough to pull out his straining cock, palming himself with a sigh of relief. James props himself up on his elbows to watch him, and licks his lips at the sight.

Francis grins at him. Strokes himself once, twice, and holds out his thumb for James. He watches, enraptured, as James’s eyes flutter shut and his throat works. He indulges James for a few moments and then pulls his thumb away with a soft, obscene pop.

‘Lie down,’ he says, and James nods, falling back with his head on the pillow. His legs spread even wider.

He cannot entirely resist circling James’s hole once, twice, for James’s beautiful eager squirms, the way he tries to catch Francis on his rim.

‘Tch,’ he says, pulling back, and his lips twitch at the look of betrayal James shoots him.

‘You said you would,’ he says.

‘I did no such thing,’ says Francis.

James tosses his head, and Francis has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. Absurd for a man who won’t see thirty-five again to pout like a child who wants a toy and has been told to wait. Absurd for a man who won’t see fifty again to be charmed by such a display. They’re an absurd pair.

Absurd, yes, but he cannot be seen to brook such behaviour. So, he schools his countenance and says ‘James, look at me.’

No response. There is a mulish set to James’s jaw.

‘Captain Fitzjames,’ says Francis, ‘I will not tolerate petulance.’

A shiver passes through the length of James’s body. His lashes lower on his cheek, and he swallows.

‘Captain Fitzjames,’ says Francis, quietly, ‘I am not asking.’

James seems to melt into the mattress. Slowly he turns his face back up to Francis, lids lifting slowly. His eyes, when he looks at Francis, are bright.

‘There now,’ says Francis. He runs his knuckles up the length of James’s throat and taps the underside of his chin. ‘You’ll get it, lad, but I’ll not hurt you.’

‘You _won’t_ , Francis, I -’

‘James.’

James swallows. He says on a whisper ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good boy,’ says Francis, bending to kiss the tip of James’s nose. He swallows a grin at the jerk of James’s prick at the words.

He resumes his position kneeling between James’s legs, and begins to frig himself in good earnest, cocking a minatory eyebrow at James’s cracked gasp at the sight. It does not take long, and Francis thinks he might be embarrassed about this later, but at present he is hard pressed to care about anything other than the divine relief of his own hand, slick with oil and cramping slightly from his exertions earlier, flying over his neglected prick.

He manages to scramble together the wherewithal to angle his prick so that he spills in long white stripes across James’s hole, which clenches at the contact as if trying to suck up Francis’s offering.

Francis collapses with his head pressed to James’s thigh, chest heaving. When he comes to himself, he lifts his head enough to smile, albeit blearily, at James, before shifting down.

At the first touch of Francis’s mouth to his hole, James arches off the bed. Francis slides one hand under each thigh and grips firmly. He nuzzles the soft skin just beneath one hipbone, tongue flicking out to get the splatter of his release, then following the fast-cooling trail down James’s inner thigh. He kisses it back into James’s hole, then attaches his lips to his rim and feasts.

He is exacting, as fastidious as James could ever desire him to be on the minutest points of his wardrobe. He licks inside James’s fluttering hole, loosened by Francis’s own fist. He works his jaw and cranes his neck to reach as far inside James as he can with his tongue, seeking out his own spend and sucking it back into his own mouth.

And then, having exhausted the uses of fastidiousness, he sucks and slurps with abandon, until the spit is running down his chin and James is mewling and thrashing beneath him. He does not swallow himself down yet; he did make James a promise, after all, and he will not be forsworn.

He trails closed lips up James’s stiff prick, thumbs digging into his hips to stay their bucking motion. He opens his mouth over the flushed pink head of James’s cock, letting his spit and spend dribble down the side. He tongues and mouths down the underside, feels the hot weight of his bollocks on his tongue. He feels delirious, half-mad with the scent of James, the feel of him in his mouth, the taste of him, the slide of his own spend and spit dripping down James’s lovely prick, catching in the thatch of hair at the base of him. When he sucks James’s cock, there’s the taste of him mixing with Francis’s own, profane and exquisite.

‘Francis,’ says James, ‘Francis, please, I need – Francis, _please_.’

Francis hums around James’s prick and sucks harder, hand wrapping around the base and working. A few moments of diligent action and James is spurting, helplessly. Francis catches a goodly amount in his mouth and pulls off in time for the rest of James’s spend to permanently compromise his shirt-front.

He crawls up James’s limp form and noses his mouth open. He kisses his spend and James’s into James’s mouth, feeling James stir and moan, a bubbling gurgle. His seed leaks from James’s parted lips and dribbles down to his chin, and Francis licks it up and feeds it back to him.

He thumbs at James’s mouth, sticky and shining, and smiles into James’s eyes when they open slowly to stare at him. Then he moves back down to kneel between James’s legs and pushes two fingers into his hole.

James’s back arches off the bed as he cries. ‘Francis, _Francis_ , what are you -’

‘You have more,’ says Francis, resting his thumb on James’s red rim, ‘You’ve saved up some more, lad, you always do.’

James shivers. ‘I haven’t,’ he says, while squirming down on Francis’s fingers with a ripe squelch.

‘Whisht now,’ says Francis, finding the spot inside him and stroking mercilessly until James is thrashing and wailing, cock jerking against his chest.

‘There you are,’ says Francis, stroking James’s flank with his other hand, ‘So beautiful, good Christ, look at you, look at you.’

It’s only when James’s hoarse pleas have a real urgency that Francis withdraws his fingers, dropping a chaste kiss to James’s rim. He goes to the basin, moistens a cloth and returns to bed, passing it gently over James’s thighs, his bollocks, his cock curled up soft and sleepy, and finally his hole.

‘I’ll receive next time,’ he announces, surveying him. James hums complaisantly enough, until an unpleasant thought seems to strike him and he says with some indignation ‘I’m not _fragile_ , Francis.’

‘You’re not,’ says Francis, wiping James’s chest and bringing the cloth to his face, ‘but you have been shirking of late, don’t think I haven’t noticed.’

It is not easy to sniff haughtily with a cloth mopping dried spend from one’s lips, but James is a man of many talents.

Francis grins at him and puts the cloth away. He then takes off his trousers, smalls and shirt: they’re inundated with sweat and God knows what else. James, with his long history of spiting washerwomen and currently boneless in the wake of his release, is likely superbly indifferent to the plight of the unfortunate soul who will need to attend to them. But tomorrow he will be profuse with smiles and a fluttering bachelor’s helplessness[4] to the dour-faced and long-suffering woman who keeps their bedding and clothing respectable in the face of daunting odds.

The man himself is currently sprawled exactly as Francis left him, with seemingly neither the intention nor ability to move.

‘Budge,’ says Francis, with a hand on his shoulder, and, when James vouchsafes no response, he shoves him bodily so that he rolls over. ‘Brute,’ says James, and then promptly shuffles nearer, throwing a long proprietorial leg over Francis, nudging his chin with his head until he makes room for him.

Francis brings an arm around him, hand stroking through his damp hair then moving in circles down his back. James for his part is running a hand down Francis’s side, his mouth closing gently on one nipple. Francis twitches, his cock giving a throb of delighted protest, but he recognises these touches as ones of comfort but no near intention.

‘Thank you,’ says James at length.

Francis says nothing in response, merely bringing one long strand of hair up to his lips to kiss.

‘Have you done that before?’ asks James.

‘No,’ says Francis.

He feels James still, and then hears him say with studied ease: ‘Not with anyone?’

‘Nobody,’ says Francis. ‘Nobody but you.’

He feels James’s smile against his chest. ‘James, lamb, what you permitted -’

‘Permitted?’ says James, ‘You have a curious memory of what transpired. I _asked_ , Francis. I deuced near had to _beg_.’ He pauses and his next words are quieter: ‘I never asked you, though: did _you_ want this?’

‘I’d not thought to ask,’ says Francis, ‘for you to allow -’

‘ _Allow_?’

‘I’d never think to ask,’ says Francis.

‘But did you like it?’

James’s face is hovering over his, now, eyes wide.

Francis pulls him in for a kiss. ‘Yes,’ he says against James’s lips, ‘Yes, Christ, yes.’

James pulls away, smiling. ‘But if you are asking,’ he says, ‘if I asked to stake a claim to you, Francis – to you, in general, to your fist in particular -’ he shrugs, ‘yes.’

‘James, you don’t need -’

‘I want you, you see,’ says James, and the laughter is gone from his voice entirely, ‘rather badly.’

Francis swallows. He holds James’s gaze as he continues: ‘I’d absorb you into me, whole and entire, if I could also have you to hold afterwards. I’d have you, and the parts of you that you left with Ross, or Miss Cracroft, or the Antarctic.’ His mouth twists. ‘Since that remains impractical, I make do with what I can.’

And Francis is not equal to this, has never been equal to James at his most naked and candid. All he can do is to pick up his hand and press it over his heart. ‘Yours,’ he says.

 _Yours_ , he thinks, _yes, even the parts of me I left with James, or Sophia, or the Terror, or the Antarctic, or the mists over Loch Cairlinn, all yours ever since I cannot say when._

‘Be careful what you wish for,’ he says, trying for a smile, and says again, tightening his hand over James’s and pressing hard over his breast, ‘Yours.’

James’s eyes are shining. He looks down at his hand on Francis’s skin and says carefully: ‘ _A chuid_.’

Francis’s eyes shut despite himself. He’s smiling, he knows, smiling like a lovesick schoolboy and he could not stop if the whole of the Host descended from the heavens and bade him to. He has to take a deep breath before he can even school his features to say ‘Your accent’s abominable, lad.’

‘My accent,’ says James loftily, ‘is only as good as my instructor.’

‘My fault, eh?’ says Francis, lifting an eyebrow. ‘Is it schooling you’re asking for, then, boyo?’

He’s rolling them over as James is nodding. Chin on James’s chest, he says ‘Say it again.’

‘For practice?’

 _I like to hear you say it_ , thinks Francis, but does not say. He says, instead: ‘Say it again.’

And James rolls his eyes, but obliges. And Francis says: ‘Again.’ And as James says it again – and again, and again – Francis thinks that he is no stranger to vastnesses that would swallow him whole without even the grace of malice aforethought: the sea is one, and the great white of the poles another. His whole life has been staving off that embrace, that final and terrible chokehold.

 _What a thing it is_ , he thinks, looking at James, _to_ want _to be consumed_.

[1] Which is to say, Francis’s Jamesa

a That is further to say, Francis’s James who also thinks of him as James’s Francis.

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[2] Francis has learned that devotion rarely _is_ earned.

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[3] Oh, and before. Long, long before.

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[4] To say nothing of a small ransom.

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**Author's Note:**

> Vague recollection tells me that 'a chuid' means 'mine' (or technically 'my share'). For the love of God, tell me if I've had these fools insult each other's sweet dead Grannies or something.
> 
> My unending thanks to the unnecessarily fabulous [reserve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve), who talked me off ledges and whose Fitzjames insight I have shamelessly pilfered for this story.
> 
> My tumblr handle is [itsevidentvery](https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/) if you'd like to come yell with me there.
> 
> A handy-dandy rebloggable link for this fic is [here](https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/post/624018580936278016/an-embarrassment-of-jameses-anactoriatalksback) if you are so inclined.


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